Three in the Morning
by cowboyEmpiricist
Summary: A series of short stories written between the witching hour and passing out. Chapter One: in which, hey, did it occur to anyone else that Nepeta was raised in a cave by a lion?


In an attempt to kick myself into writing more, forcing myself to publish it for review no matter how bad I think it is, and in accordance with the hours I'm most awake at, I've decided to write a series of short fics between the hours of midnight and four a.m. This will definitely turn out well.

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><p>The worst thing was never having anyone to talk to.<p>

Not just in the emotional sense, with all your feeling and emotions, and needing to have jams in regards to them. No, you literally had no one to talk to. The other trolls generally managed to get the hang of the speechy thing, either by talking to the other trolls in their hivestem, or lawnblock, or elaborate palacial hive. Your lusus, on the other hand, dragged you into the wilderness, into a cave miles and miles away from the last place anyone gave a shit, and spoke to you only in growls, and purrs, and occasionally picking you up by the neck and shaking you when you were being rambunctious and she was trying to sleep. You didn't mind. You always felt actions spoke louder than words.

Actions like crawling on your belly through the underbrush, pushing the foliage apart, breathing deeply as you saw your prey obliviously drinking from the lake. Like flicking your wrists, feeling the blades extend like they were your own bones. Like leaping twenty feet onto the beast's back, clutching it tight with tooth and nail and screaming at the top of your lungs with the creature, feeling the cold steel plunge into soft flesh again and again and again, the blood spraying in your face until finally it stopped moving.

Ew, blood everywhere. Pounce wouldn't be happy. You decided to take a bath. You were purrty sure no one would try and steal your prey after that display.

There was nothing cruel about it. It was simply how you were raised. Food and clothes and paint and anything you wanted were always found ripped from a beast's corpse. It was fair, you decided, although you didn't know how to express that sentiment exactly. And anyways, if they wanted to keep their meats inside them, they should have fought you off harder, or been smart enough to find your cave. They would have died anyway. They were serving a higher purpose, that being your continued existence. Pounce probably would have told you about that, if she could have talked.

She did talk, in a way. You never did have a recuperacoon. With any other troll, that would have been a recipe for disaster. The blood, the screaming, the fire, the crunching of bones, and that irresistible feeling that YOU are the one who is doing this. It makes you feel invincible, in the wrong way. It usually ends with some stupid wriggler lunging at another and getting culled.

But Pounce was clever. It wasn't like there was anyone else around for you to harm. She saw the rage, and she knew it was in your nature. You would curl up on her to sleep, and she would whisper in your ear, just loud enough to shape your dreams, make them sharper, and clear. The shapeless shadows that were your enemies took form, coalescing into beasts, ever larger and larger, and your dreams were filled with beautiful, wonderful blood. Spilling, dripping, running down your face. And Pounce knew. And she knew every word she murmured would take root in your mind, shaping you, honing that rage, like a metal beam into a fine blade.

No, there were no words then. Those came later, that day when you found the green box, the one with the paper with the green markings and the plastic thing. In retrospect, you decided, several sweeps later, that it would have been a good idea to have kept the paper, but at the time it was meaningless, like the other ones you found blowing in the breeze sometimes. Fancy leaves.

The plastic thing, though, was new. You had come into plenty of meat, so you spent the rest of the day playing with it. If it had been a little less childproof, it might have broken while you were trying to discover its purpose. But its casing was firm, and there was so little new then that this new discovery deserved no less than your full attention, even moreso when you managed to make it glow. It was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen.

There was definitely a pattern to it, and if there was one thing you were good at, it was patterns. This was a new kind of hunt, you decided. There was something of value in this glowing thing. So much complexity, in one little box. It was satisfying - it bent to your will with little provocation, and you soon learned how to draw simple lines with your fingers. Lines turned to shapes and forms, of Pounce, of trees and rocks, of you, and from the strange immateriality of your toy to the blood and ash on the walls. But the novelty of that, gripping as it was, eventually bored you as well.

It was about that time you noticed the head. It looked rather a lot like yours - round, with two horns. You promptly pushed it, and more rectangles showed up, with more inside them, and shapes and forms and colors, and a form for you to make your own. These scribbles prompted more shapes, and you giggled at how there started to be more of them, how they got bigger when you sent your own, until finally a really big, flashing red rectangle showed up, and they wouldn't let you make any more. That depressed you for a while.

And then he came. You heard him calling, but you weren't sure what it was. You crept around him, watching him intently. He was like you. Gray skin, yellow eyes, candy corn horns. You smiled. And pounced, but for once, with no malice at all. He seemed awfully flustered, which as he would explain to you some time later, was mostly on account of your clothing, or pronounced lack thereof. He seemed unreceptive to licking, as well, which left you rather confused and perhaps a little offended.

He sighed. This might take a while. He took his hands, and held them to his face.

"Equius. Eeeequius."

He pressed his finger to your nose. You cradled it in your hand, jerking away, feeling your own blood dripping from the bruise, screeching.

The screech didn't sound like "Nepeta" because that would be stupid. And yet it kind of did.


End file.
